Replication Research in the Social Sciences by James W. NeuliepReview by: Christinger TomerThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Oct., 1992), pp. 468-470Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4308759 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 22:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheLibrary Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:45:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

468 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

The book points to a useful theoretical concept for analyzing interpersonal communication within libraries, and its chapters indirectly identify methodologi- cal approaches relevant for studying informational encounters. Aside from its usefulness to researchers, however, information specialists will benefit from the interpretation of a broad range of research findings in a variety of disciplines regarding communication with members of the opposite sex, the aged, the dis- abled, and nonnative speakers, for example. Students of the reference interview will see some commonalities with the doctor-patient interviews and the speech therapy interviews. "Miscommunication" and Problematic Talk is an excellent contri- bution to the literature, both in raising consciousness about miscommunication and in integrating the research and perspectives of a wide range of disciplines.

Marilyn Domas White, College of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland at College Park

Replication Research in the Social Sciences. Edited by JAMES W. NEULIEP. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1991. Pp. 517. $24.00. ISBN 0-8039-4092-0.

Research in library science has had many detractors over the years. They have noted properly that the research in library science tends to lack rigor, that the methods of investigation are often crude or misapplied or both, that generaliz- able results tend to be the exception rather than the rule, and that, taken to- gether, the body of research in the field lacks the continuity that might offer a basis for overcoming the aforementioned flaws. More specifically, Gail Schlachter has noted that research in library and information science is "frag- mented, noncumulative, generally weak, and relentlessly oriented to immediate practice" ("Research: One Step at a Time," RQ 29 [Spring 1990]: 293-94). Similarly, Charles McClure and Ann Bishop have written that research in library and information science tends to be trivial and repetitive and that it often lacks what would otherwise be essential components of the research process ("The Status of Research in Library/Information Science: Guarded Optimism," College & Research Libraries 50 [1989]: 136).

Of these flaws, none is more important than the failure of research in library science to transcend the fragmentation and discontinuities characteristic of im- mature disciplines. The worth of research investigations, the value of their con- tribution to the body of objective knowledge, is determined by the confirmation or refutation of their findings and by the extent to which the investigations and their findings can be replicated. As P. A. Lamal writes in the essay entitled "On the Importance of Replication," replication of research "is necessary because our knowledge is corrigible" (p. 31). In library science, complaints about the inability to build a substantial, coherent body of professional knowledge may be attributed more or less directly to the infrequency with which research is systematically replicated.

Replication Research in the Social Sciences is a collection of papers that first ap- peared as a special issue of the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality. Of the collection's five sections, the first, which deals with the more general aspects of replication of research in the social sciences, is probably most valuable to scholars in library and information science. In this section, a series of authors deal with basic issues, including the nature and limits of replicability in research of any kind.

In some of the contributions to this first section, there is a "Heisenberg-for-

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:45:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 469

beginners" quality to the narratives, which have the salutary effect of illustrating the complexity of the relationship between original research and replicated stud- ies. The opening essay, a review of replication research by Robert Rosenthal, examines a series of relevant issues and notions, ranging from the "file drawer" problem, which refers to the fact that most studies finding nonsignificant results are never published, to Rosenthal's less likely proposal to weight replications and subsequently generate indexes of replication and generality. Even more problematic are the sometimes painful essays of discovery embedded in several of the papers. For example, in the paper by Yehuda Amir and Irit Sharon of Israel's Bar-Ilan University, the authors offer the obvious notion that if an empirical result is to serve as the basis for theory-in this instance, psychological theory-"it should fulfill at least two prerequisites: the test of reproducibility and the test of generalizability" (p. 51), as if it was an observation of great profundity. In fairness to Amir and Sharon, they go on to make and explore an operationally important distinction between reproduction of research, in which an investigator attempts to determine if a finding noted in one sample is observed in other, similar samples, and the replication aimed at testing the generalizability of such a finding in terms of other, dissimilar samples. But, then, Amir and Sharon conclude, rather dubiously, by asserting that validating the results of psychological research requires the ability to reproduce research results under conditions "identical" to those characterizing the basis of the initial finding, when it is clear that the duplication of such conditions is, under the best of circumstances, no better than approximate.

In the essay entitled "Publication Politics, Experimenter Bias and the Replica- tion Process in Social Science Research," matters are at least more interesting. The author, Robert Bornstein, suggests that the fierce competition for editorial space in the journals of the social sciences-he cites data that indicate that among journals in the social sciences the acceptance rate is at least three times lower than it is in the so-called hard sciences-tends to diminish the number of replication studies published in the social sciences because editors and reviewers are more inclined to devote the available space to more original studies. Born- stein argues further that this situation compounds the problem of insufficient replication in the social sciences, inasmuch as scholars working within the frame- work of academic systems are reluctant to invest time in the preparation of research that is not likely to be published. He suggests that solving the problem may be as simple as inducing the editors of journals to set aside a small portion of each issue for the publication of brief reports (two to three pages) describing the results of replicated studies. This may or may not be a realistic proposal, but it is interesting to note, nevertheless, that in proposing that the solution to an epistemic problem should be defined in terms of formal communication processes, Bornstein tethers the social sciences to a model of public knowledge espoused by British physicist John Ziman in the late 1960s (Public Knowledge [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968]).

In other sections, papers that replicate previous investigations in psychologi- cal, sociological, and communications research are offered as models. Lacking expertise in these disciplines and in the absence of commentaries that might place such papers in perspective, it is difficult to offer a useful appraisal, but the book's penultimate paper, "Women's Formal Evening Wear, 1937-1982: A Quantitative Analysis," is certainly a source of wonder. This paper replicates a 1940 study that described evening gowns in terms of six measures, including length and width of the decolletage. Using fashion plates as a source of data, the authors of the more recent paper, F. David Mulcahy and Herbert Sherman,

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:45:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

470 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

plot the rise and fall of the d&colletage from 1787 through the early 1980s, in an analysis replete with statistical tables, scatter diagrams, and time series, in- cluding a longitudinal assessment of the correlation between the length and the width of the d&colletage. (Curiously, they fail to take into account the fact that women are generally taller today than they were two hundred years ago, and that comparative tables based on raw measurements may provide a distorted view of the d6colletage, at least historically.)

In the promotional blurb on the back cover of the book, Replication Research in the Social Sciences is characterized as: "An immediate classic . . . a 'must read' for anyone seriously interested in the advancement of research and theory in the social and behavioral sciences."

That is an assessment clearly at odds with the book's limitations and flaws. But for researchers in library science, Replication Research in the Social Sciences is a source of some consolation, at least to the extent that it offers, albeit inadver- tently, ample evidence of the methodological confusion that troubles the re- search of other fields.

Christinger Tomer, School of Library and Information Science, University of Pittsburgh

Using Computers in Qualitative Research. Edited by NIGEL G. FIELDING and RAY-

MOND M. LEE. London: Sage, 1991. Pp. vii+ 216. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8039-8424-3 (cloth); 0-8039-8425-1 (paper).

Using Computers in Qualitative Research is a compilation of papers presented at a conference at the University of Surrey in July 1989, which brought together researchers experienced with, or interested in, using computer software to facili- tate the handling of qualitative data resulting from their research. The pub- lisher's statement on the back cover, describing this work as "a comprehensive assessment of recent developments in the use of computers in qualitative re- search," is misleading. In Lee and Fielding's introductory chapter, "Computing for Qualitative Research: Options, Problems and Potential," the editors state a more limited purpose: "We aimed to produce a book which was both a state-of- the-art review and a primer that would offer those with little computing experi- ence sufficient background to select programs with which to try their hand at the computer analysis of qualitative data" (p. 1). As such, this collection of papers can be a useful introduction to the various programs available for handling textual data, such as questionnaire responses to open-ended questions, interview transcripts, notes from observations, personal diaries, and public documents, and to some of the conceptual issues involved with the use of computers to assist the often arduous and tortuous process of making sense out of large quantities of textual data.

The organization of the volume, however, is difficult to relate to the three principal themes of the symposium enumerated by the editors, which were an exploration of the sorts of research problems computer programs can and can- not handle; the teaching of computer-based techniques in qualitative research; and the implications of the development of computer-based techniques for the craft of qualitative research. The eleven chapters are organized into three parts, which seem to have no direct relation to these themes: part 1, "Using Computers in Qualitative Research"; part 2, "Implications for Research Practice"; and part 3, "Qualitative Knowledge and Computing." The editors' introductions to the

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.250 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:45:32 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions